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Why the search restriction on the forum - 5 or fewer characters

carolnbarney

By carolnbarney
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t4e

+t4e

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also because most words with fewer than 5 letters can be very common words, more so the 3 letter words so it will be impossible to get a meaningful result to a search

 

and in addition, forum search functions are not the most efficient tools, i am yet to see a forum software that has a good reliable search function

 

just use the wildcards

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carolnbarney

+carolnbarney

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Please see the Page in the Groundspeak Knowledge Books entitled Searching the Forum. The limits are due to performance issues. If more hamsters worked on the search engine, there'd be fewer hamsters loading threads for people to read, and we'd have complaints about that instead.

 

Let's see if I get this the way you intended! You figure you are going to get complaints either way you go, so restricting search terms is designed to elicit the least number of complaints?? As in the servers will only do so much and to allow them to search terms of fewer than 5 characters would tax it too much so as to cause it's overall performance to suffer?

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knowschad

knowschad

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Posted
Please see the Page in the Groundspeak Knowledge Books entitled Searching the Forum. The limits are due to performance issues. If more hamsters worked on the search engine, there'd be fewer hamsters loading threads for people to read, and we'd have complaints about that instead.

 

I realize that training and feeing them doesn't come for free, but geeze... my yearly PM fees alone would take care of at least one or two of these fellers:

 

http://www.petclassifieds.us/c/1124/Hamsters.html

http://www.topix.com/forum/pets/hamsters/TOIQ0SUU0FG6J98G9

http://www.petwebsite.com/hamsters_for_sale.asp

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StarBrand

+StarBrand

Posted
Posted

Please see the Page in the Groundspeak Knowledge Books entitled Searching the Forum. The limits are due to performance issues. If more hamsters worked on the search engine, there'd be fewer hamsters loading threads for people to read, and we'd have complaints about that instead.

 

Let's see if I get this the way you intended! You figure you are going to get complaints either way you go, so restricting search terms is designed to elicit the least number of complaints?? As in the servers will only do so much and to allow them to search terms of fewer than 5 characters would tax it too much so as to cause it's overall performance to suffer?

Use the Goggle search workaround listed on that same page. It works.

 

The forums run off of a far different server than the rest of the site. There are literally millions of posts in the forums and the forums database software isn't real good anyway (Groundspeak didn't write it). Just the way it is.

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knowschad

knowschad

Posted
Posted
also because most words with fewer than 5 letters can be very common words, more so the 3 letter words so it will be impossible to get a meaningful result to a search

 

and in addition, forum search functions are not the most efficient tools, i am yet to see a forum software that has a good reliable search function

 

just use the wildcards

Three and four letter words are very frequently requested search terms here. Even enclosing the search phrase in quotation marks isn't always sufficient. I forget now what it was I was searching for earlier tonight, but the middle of three words in my search phrase (enclosed in quotes) was only three letters long, and that still aborted my search. Sorry, but this is 1020 and this really is inexcusable.

 

However, the workaround, as silly as it may be to need one, is to use Google's site search, where you first specify where you want it to look, using the site: keyword followed by your search phrase or keywords ... SITE:FORUMS.Groundspeak.COM FTF TFTC

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t4e

+t4e

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... Sorry, but this is 1020 and this really is inexcusable.

 

...

 

You expect much so soon after Leif Ericson's death and the proliferation of the crossbow across France......

 

isn't that the time when hamsters started ruling the world? :)

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carolnbarney

+carolnbarney

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I tried the Google option and it does work. To a degree!

 

What it also does is truncate/shorten the titles of the specific message in the forum if it goes beyond some unknown length. So what you end up with is a listing of titles of messages with possibly a shortened title if said title is too long by Google's standards. Better that what Groundspeak will let it's own search function in the forums that you are searching in the first place do, but still less than stellar.

 

I'm sorry, but it still strikes me in a bad way that as technically adept as I expect Groundspeak et. al. is/are that there's not some way this Mickey Mouse arrangement can't be rectified.

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Keystone

Keystone

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Posted

The forum software is due for replacement by new forum software (Community Server). Thus you are unlikely to see anything but band-aid solutions to issues with the existing third party software.

 

Psssssst... had you asked nicely, I would have explained about how to fix the display option after Google search passes the "outline form" command as part of the URL you obtained in the search results.

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t4e

+t4e

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Posted (edited)

The forum software is due for replacement by new forum software (Community Server). Thus you are unlikely to see anything but band-aid solutions to issues with the existing third party software.

 

 

 

ooh noes, please say that is not true, those things never go smoothly :)

 

and if it is, why not vBulletin?...its the most versatile and easy to use forum software out there

Edited by t4e
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